Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1887-03-18

on her children and is the recognized
queen of the young subjects. The other is
an usurper and is promptly stigmatized.
The sourness resulting from what the
world has given the general name of ''dis-
appointment" to. exists to great extent
simply in the Imagination of the world,
They think an elderly single woman must
have been disappointed, and consequently
must feel soured with world in which
she has failed to get justice. Now, il is
the rarest thing in the world to find a
woman who could not have been married
at some time in her life If she had wanted
to. AS for myself have never known
one. So it would be more exact to say of
a woman who remains single late in life
that she has disappointed somebody, rath-
er than been disappointed herself. In that
case it should be the man who ought to be
soured and not her. But you say she was
not sappointed in not being married, but
in not filling her place in life-that of mar
ried woman? 1t is astonishing to know
how few women ever really want to be
married. They may yield to the influence
of affection; to the desire to exchange an
uncertain or stinted living for better one;
to the ambition for social privileges, but
the woman is a rauG aUis who without any
of these propulsions cooliy inspects married
life and desires to enter it as simple
matter of preference. No; it'll the man
who brings the marriage about, not the
woman. Then if old maids hearts have not
soured why are they sourP Well it is a
sourness born Of selfishness, trait
that becomes developed in either sex by
living alone. Isolation begets the custom
of having ones own way; having nobody
else to be interested in, we centre upon
ourselves. Unused to adapting ourselves
to Others we fall into beaten rack. every
one crossing which is to US d tresSpasser,
and so we DRIFT into war, or at the least
drift into eccentric manifestations of de-
yotlon-for there is nothing mean about
this sort of selfshness-to this thing or
that, which falls in with our selfish hu-
&
merely to crafty our whims rather than
The object of them. And out of this
whImsicallty, chiefly exhibited towards
,hosenear by ties of blood, grow the beauti-
ful stories we read of the angelic seli-abne-
cation Of old maids. 1t is pretty much as
you often see old bachelors taking odd
shoots in generosity or kindly deeds solely
TO please themselves, but which the world
is not gallant enough to Call angelic as it
does with the other sex.
And SO you see, 1 think old maids as
they are called are not such from lack of
marriage, Or disappointment. They are so
oy dignity forced on them BY years and
Intensified by that isolation which always
accompanies dignity ever on the watch
against surprises that result in ridicule.
The single woman advanced in years is at
d great disadvantage. She may have
many charming characteristics and much
Of the mental freshness of youth, but has
20 repress them, where a young girl would
charm by displaying. Take a young girls
marriage for instance. Can anything BIZ
more fascinating to the nature masculine
and or anything more fresh and child
like. But from Older lips, however beautl-
ful, how they jar on US as somehow the
product of affectation or downright silli-
nees. And yet have known many
women of forty with minds as fresh and
Ingenious as when they were girls. The
situation is memorable however, and even
hose who wish to help them cannot
change it.
And now would these old naaid minds
have been happier, mated !? l cannot say.
But at the best it is hazardous expert
ment on both sides. IJ is hazardous
with the masculine mind, which is of
coarser fibre and has learned the art OF
accommodating itself by long buffeting
with the world; but with that fine piece of
psychological mechanism, the female
lection OF close companion almost
amounts to disruption. 1t has been held
that affection Can smooth all paths, but
this is d mistake. The most intense affec
tion from I. nisGt companion can only give
the April intervals of blue SKY, something
almost as perlous to peace as
steady, sullen November. 1t Is patient
forbearance alone that can give ever-clear
skies, and with women late in life this is
an art not easily acquired. That very
habit of concentration which gives a
single woman late In life what is called
strength Of character, and is certainly
strength of mind; which makes her so de-
lightful and improving friend, and which
gives hera certain elevation, if not breadth
of ylews-that very concentration. say,
depriges her of mobility. and gives her a
certain fxedness of mind which neither
husband nor lover Can change. So clearly
come to say that such a woman was mark
ed out for a single life and. as the world
often does it has uttered truth without
knowing the reason for it. The mark is
neither on their faces nor their FORMS
both are often better up to the standard
required by the world than their married
slsters-but they bear it On their souls.
Perhaps you sympathize with them Spare
your tears, they are not needed. There is
no being on earth who contains within
herself as many resources for making her
own life happy as the old maid Of average
intellect. The world exhausting every
device to conquer sort Of from and-to-
mouth happiness pities her, while she with
her resources stored up through many a
long Year-pities the World.
And now, turning from old maids let
me tell you something about young
To- hor